He has been involved in theatre productions, including Hawaiʻi-based journalist Gary Kubota’s critically-acclaimed, one-man touring play The Legend of Koʻolau, television shows, including ABC’s Castle, and most recently stared in Hawaiʻi-based writer/ director Brian Kohne’s feature length film, Kuleana (2017).

Summit (S): How did you get started in acting? What is it about acting that appeals to you?

Moronai Kanekoa (MK): There weren’t a lot of opportunities for acting on Maui and I didn’t know anyone growing up who did it, so I didn’t get involved until college. My original plan was to go to med school, but in my third year in college I took an intro course in the medical field and I realized that it wasn’t really for me. I had left to go on a Mormon mission to Argentina and was gone for two years; when I came back, I decided to try out acting.

We watched a lot of movies and TV in our household. I’ve always enjoyed, not only the excitement of action movies and horror, but also the way an audience is able to connect with people that we don’t even know through story. I’ve always found film’s ability to do that fascinating.

The ability to connect with people universally, through emotion, is cathartic. I’m not actually a really emotional kind of guy. So acting helps me, in a way, with my emotional side: I get to share and work through my emotions when I’m telling stories through my acting.

S: I first came across your name when you were touring the archipelago for The Legend of Koʻolau, which received a lot of positive feedback here in the islands and in the continental U.S. too. How did you get involved with that play and what does it mean to you?

MK: I got involved with that play after I graduated from USC. A couple of my professors there forwarded me an email from Gary Kubota, who was looking for a Native Hawaiian actor for a role. I decided to email Gary and asked to audition.

At the time he was just looking for an understudy because he had already cast Booga Booga’s Ed Kaʻahea for the role. I got the understudy role, but then Ed suddenly dropped out four weeks before the debut. I had to memorize the whole thing without much rehearsal time. We started rehearsing about a week before the actual performance, so it was actually pretty stressful. The first couple performances were very tough. But it was great because now it was my role. I got the chance to do the whole story, just me. It was a little intimidating, but also a lot of fun.

It’s been a good run ever since. It’s gotten steadily better, every single time. Sometimes I wish we did the play as a solid run instead of just having one or two performances here and there. It’s tough to drop it for a while and then have to pick it back up and do it again a couple of times.

S: Yeah, I’m sure. You have to restart your engines and get back into the race all over again. About how many lines are in that play? It seems like a lot for one person to memorize.

MK: It’s about 60 pages, a little over an hour, total. I’m not sure how many lines, but the whole thing is one long monologue. The first couple performances on Kauaʻi, there were a few times in each performance that I went completely blank. Those are the most terrifying moments. Whenever you’re an actor on stage and you have no idea what comes next, you just have to figure out a way to get back on track, and you have to do it quickly.

S: Besides the memorization, what are some of the other unique acting challenges that a one man play presents?

MK: It’s draining. There are just so many moments and beats to try to remember on top of the lines, and you have to keep the ball rolling; you have to keep the energy going. Trying to stay connected throughout the whole thing is tough. It’s a game of focus: being able to stay in it without being distracted is key. I think it’s always easier with another person onstage because you can feed and riff off one another. When it’s just you, it takes more mental focus. And its physically demanding as well. I’m usually drenched by the end of the first act.

S: The story is so powerful and has such meaning and impact to the history and narrative of Hawaiʻi. What does the story and the character of Koʻolau mean to you as you’ve learned more about it?

MK: Actually I’d never heard of it before. For some reason, it wasn’t a story people told on Maui. So reading the play was the first time I had heard about Koʻolau. Then I read a couple books, like his wife Piʻilani’s account of what happened and, for me, the most interesting part is really the connection the story draws to family, home and place; the argument of the play is that those are the most important things in life.

The story is representative of all of Hawaiʻi. Invaders, both military and cultural, were coming in at that time and displacing the indigenous political system and the culture. I think Koʻolau is a perfect symbol for Hawaiʻi. His home was under threat, and he had no choice but to die protecting what he loved: his family. Anywhere you go, family and home are the most important things to people, regardless of what culture you are a part of. The play is universal in that way.

Another thing that makes the play appeal to audiences on the continent is that a lot of people still don’t know the real story of Hawaiʻi. So the play is really eyeopening for them and is both entertaining and informative. They leave with a better sense of what happened, and what is still happening in Hawaiʻi. I like sharing that with them.

S: Let’s talk a little bit about the movie you star in: Kuleana. Can you fill us in on what it’s about?

MK: We filmed the picture during 2016, entirely on Maui except maybe for a couple of scenes that were filmed on the Big Island. The writer/director, Brian Kohne, is a Hawaiʻi boy as well, and the majority of the cast and crew were all local.

At its heart, the film is a story about a local guy coming back to his roots. I play the main character, Nohea, who is a Vietnam veteran trying to heal after his exposure to the battlefields of Southeast Asia, but he still feels a lot of stresses in everyday life back in Hawaiʻi. He just wants to get away from it all. But, little by little, events unfold that remind him of his family, of where he comes from and about what his home means to him. He’s kind of like Koʻolau, in fact, and the title of the film refers to the notion of responsibility. On the surface, it has this ‘70s noir-detective structure, but really it’s about our responsibility to our homes and our culture and our family.

S: That was a tumultuous time period in the islands, in terms of big transitions. The older, plantation-era Hawaiʻi was on the way out and the new phase of development was ramping up at a faster and faster rate, which had tectonic effects on the culture and lifestyle of everyday folks. Is that an invisible character in the movie itself: the theme of transitioning?

MK: Definitely. In the film, a lot of that theme centers around the bombing on Kahoʻolawe. As you know, the bombing was in full swing at that time. And again, just like in The Legend of Koʻolau, it addresses head-on the influence of the United States on Hawaiʻi, which is just dripping with militarism. And then you add to that the fact that Nohea is a shell-shocked Hawaiian coming back from a U.S. war of imperialism and it becomes a major element of the story.

Nohea has trouble paying the taxes for his land. His grandma is sick with diseases that her people had no traditional exposure to. All of these stresses that have come about from Hawaiʻi being part of the United States are thrust upon him. That has a huge impact on how life in Hawaiʻi has become. So it’s a real challenge for him to overcome, and the way he is finally able to succeed is by returning to his roots and figuring out what’s really important and then putting his energy into a righteous fight to protect those things.

S: What are some of the differences in acting for stage and acting for screen?

MK: It’s a different experience, and one of the challenges is trying to keep the story straight in your head because, the way movies are filmed, the scenes aren’t necessarily shot sequentially. Trying to figure out where you are in the story was hard. In every single scene, you have to figure out where the character should be emotionally. But everyone was very helpful; Brian and the other actors did a great job helping me out. It was like a little family on set.

In theatre, the emotional structure of the character—the ups and the downs—flows a lot more easily, which is what I love about theatre. Theatre is a little more taxing, and there’s more at stake because it’s live, so there’s a different kind of risk there. But as far as the story, I feel like theatre is easier in terms of acting.

S: What are your thoughts on the acting talent of Hawaiʻi and the film industry here? What would you like to see advanced and how can Hawaiʻi actors become a bigger presence on the global acting stage?

MK: It’s tough for Hawaiʻi actors to be taken seriously in the global community because, to do that, they really—at least at this point—still have to be involved in bigger acting institutions like those in L.A. and New York City. From what I’ve seen, successful local actors have had to go and do big things there before they have become recognized. That’s just how it works.

S: Does it help that there’s a large film industry footprint in the islands?

MK: It does. My co-star in Kuleana, Sonya Balmores, got a gig with ABC in the fall of 2017 after starring in the film, which is great. She’s from Hawaiʻi too, and I think her success will be a big help for future actors. Producing good films within Hawaiʻi, with local actors and local crew members—which was important to Brian—helps as well. It’s also one of the draws of the film, and gives it a certain authenticity that comes through in the final production.

But I think what has really helped the most, especially with projects like this, is that more quality local films are being created these days than ever before. And the more that those films and those filmmakers can be recognized as valid and capable of creating quality work, the easier it will be for big budget, high-profile projects to think of Hawaiʻi as a pool of talent to be tapped, as a setting to be displayed, as a place with a lot to offer in terms of rich culture and storytelling traditions. The more that happens, the more local talent we will begin to see in film, television and on stage around the world, and that is definitely something to look forward to.